


Meet me in the middle

by nightbloomingcereus



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Canon Compliant, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Sharing a Bed, THERE WAS ONLY ONE BED, The Night At Crowley's Flat (Good Omens), eventually anyway, there are two beds to start with, until Aziraphale gets fed up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:29:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29787843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightbloomingcereus/pseuds/nightbloomingcereus
Summary: In which Crowley invites Aziraphale to stay at his place, if he likes.  It's no trouble at all.  He's got two beds in his bedroom and everything.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 47
Kudos: 150





	Meet me in the middle

**Author's Note:**

> The night at Crowley's flat, based on these lines from the book: " _Crowley had a bedroom, and a kitchen, and an office, and a lounge, and a toilet…_ " and " _The beds were always made; the fridge was always stocked…_ "
> 
> There was only one bed/literal sleeping together is my favorite trope of all time, and I realized recently that I've never really written it. I couldn't let that oversight stand, so here we are. This was meant to be silly but really just ended up soft.

"That's it then," says Crowley, tipping the last of the good Scotch into his mouth. "We switch corporations, and go tripping merrily off to get ourselves executed. Do they expect us to just walk up to the office and turn ourselves in?"

"I might have, yesterday," admits Aziraphale. He looks down, to where their hands are joined, Crowley's palm cool in his, Crowley's bony fingers intertwined tightly with his own. "But not anymore. In any case, I'm certain my side—err, my former side—will send someone to collect me. And who knows when that will be. Soon, I'd imagine. So we'd best be ready the moment we leave here."

"Well, _I'm_ not leaving until I get some sleep. Can't be going off to my own fake trial – or yours, for that matter – with bags under my eyes, now can I? I've got an image to uphold, y'know."

Crowley yawns, hugely. It's both a little disconcerting – it's easy to tell he has a snake's jaw – and, at least to Aziraphale, oddly endearing.

"I suppose you'll be wanting me to get out of your hair then, so you can get some rest. I— I can go, if you like."

Aziraphale feels suddenly exhausted too, in a hollowed-out, bone-deep sort of way. The concept of leaving the flat right now seems daunting. He doesn't know _where_ he'd go, for one thing, as the bookshop is likely nothing but embers and ash, but there has to be _somewhere._ But _somewhere_ isn't _here_ , isn't where Crowley is. He wants to stay and hold Crowley's hand and watch over him while he sleeps, but that is not a thing he can possibly ask for. Instead, he's defaulted to politeness.

"No! Don't— you can't— I can't stop you if that's what you really want, angel, but it's probably not a smart idea. Didn't you just say we shouldn't leave here without switching first?"

This, too, seems daunting, although in a more distant, less urgent way. It's a reminder that figuring out Agnes' riddle was only the first step, the easy one. Tomorrow he'll have to wear Crowley's face and play Crowley's part and there will be no second chances, no room for doubt. It will require determination and confidence, and he's not sure he has enough of those. _If only_ , he thinks to himself, _if only love were enough_.

"I shouldn't like to overstay my welcome, is all."

"I meant it, you know, when I said you could stay here. As long as you like. Whenever you like. Stay…" Crowley's voice trails off, and then he adds, very quietly, "please."

"That's very kind of you."

Crowley, to his surprise, does not sputter or affect a look of horror or, indeed, do anything at all to contradict this last statement. They are both very tired, Aziraphale thinks. He feels like he might break at any minute, shatter into a thousand brittle, weary pieces. Perhaps Crowley feels the same, after the day they've both had.

"You could sleep too," offers Crowley. "I know you don't, normally, but if you're gonna pretend to be me tomorrow, it might help you get in character."

Sleep is not a thing that he's ever craved, but suddenly the prospect seems deeply, immensely attractive. Perhaps this is a temptation, but, if it is, it's almost certainly not a deliberate one.

"I suppose it couldn't hurt. But only if it isn't going to be too much trouble for you."

"N-no trouble at all. C'mon then." 

Crowley stands up, without letting go of Aziraphale's hand, and leads him down the hall, pushing open a door at the far end with his free hand. Aziraphale looks up and stops short, staring in utter confusion at what lays before him.

"Crowley," he blurts out, bewildered, all politeness forgotten, "why are there two beds?"

"'S a bedroom, innit? With beds. What else would be in a bedroom? My throne? Besides, you don't even sleep, angel. I think it's safe to say I'm the expert when it comes to bedrooms around here."

"No, I meant, why are there _two_? This is _your_ bedroom, right? Not the guest bedroom?"

"Oh," says Crowley, obviously crestfallen. He's staring down at their joined hands, refusing to meet Aziraphale's eyes. "I assumed— that is, I had thought you might want to— I guess I could snap up a guest room if you'd prefer."

"That's not—" begins Aziraphale, then thinks better of it. Now is not the time to press Crowley on his odd interior design choices. "No. That won't be necessary, dear. This will be just fine. More than fine, really. Which side is yours, then?"

Crowley exhales shakily and gestures to the bed on the left, adding, "Sometimes I sleep in the other one though. Or on the ceiling. Or backwards, with my feet on the pillow."

This last is mildly shocking to Aziraphale, who, despite not sleeping very often, has very clear ideas about pillows and counterpanes and bedskirts, and exactly where each of these things is supposed to go, and also what is _not_ supposed to go on them, namely feet. Still, it's far less shocking and more comprehensible than the bizarre sight of a pair of narrow, pristinely made twin beds, with a pair of dark, blocky nightstands separating them, in Crowley's bedroom. The corners of the sheets are creased and tucked so sharply they look like they could slice through something. The bedding, at least, makes sense, all shades of black and charcoal grey.

When he thinks about Crowley sleeping, Aziraphale has always imagined him sprawled out, long limbs and sinuous spine taking up more room than they should, on a wide, king-sized bed, blankets rumpled and mounded around him, decadent and a little excessive. Now, he's trying to reconcile that well-loved mental image with what he sees before him. He's surprised to realize that he _can_ picture it, after all – Crowley tucked up safe and tight in one of these prim, narrow single beds – and that it's a strangely sweet image.

He wonders if Crowley had miracled the beds up just then, either in order to avoid having to share his own bed or under the mistaken notion that Aziraphale might not wish to do so, but rejects that assumption almost immediately. All of the furniture in the room is solid and substantial, in a way that freshly miracled objects never are; it's clear that they've existed in their present configuration, inclusive of shape and form and function, for some time, years even.

He tries not to dwell on the implications. Instead, he busies himself with miracling himself a pair of pajamas, in a fine, pale blue Egyptian cotton decorated with a narrow trim of his personal tartan. He has an identical pair – _had,_ he realizes with an unpleasant jolt, they've undoubtedly been burnt to nothing now – in the flat above his shop, because, even if he doesn't sleep, sometimes he likes to put on pajamas, get cozy under the covers, and read in bed. Which, it must be said, is – _was_ – a proper, double bed, suitable for one or a pair of adults or adult-sized ethereal or occult beings.

He swallows the ache in his chest and looks up at Crowley, who is himself now clad in a pair of black silk pajamas. He's removed his sunglasses, and his eyes are bare and golden; there's a hint of red high up on his cheekbones, where it would normally have been hidden by the dark lenses.

Suddenly, the loss of the bookshop doesn't seem quite so terrible. It still hurts, to be sure, but the sharp sting of it is lessened by the knowledge that he hasn't lost what is most important after all.

Crowley ruffles a hand through his hair, making a mess of it, shuffles from one foot to the other, and then says, a bit awkwardly, "err, good night then, angel."

"Good night, dear. Sleep well."

Aziraphale goes over to the bed on the right, turns back the covers, and gets in. To his left, Crowley does the same. He hears the faint sound of a snap and the even fainter hiss of a miracle zipping through the air, and then the lights go out, casting the room into shadow and silhouette.

The bed, for all its proper, neatly-made appearance and small size, is luxuriously soft, the pillow the perfect, miraculous combination of yielding and firm, the blankets warm but not too weighty. Still, Aziraphale can't get comfortable. For the next half hour, he lays stiffly in bed and listens to Crowley flail, tossing and turning and flinging his limbs this way and that. When he finally dares to glance over to the left, he can see, in the dim, perpetual glow of the sleeping city through the window, that three out of four of those limbs are dangling precariously off the sides of the ridiculously narrow mattress. One of Crowley's arms is stretched over the gap between the two beds, its fingers outspread like a star.

Slowly, an inch at a time, Aziraphale extends his own arm.

He thinks about how he'd put his mouth where Crowley's had been, warm and wet on the smooth lip of a bottle of night-dark wine. The furtive press of palm against palm, thigh against thigh, on a hard plastic bus seat, as headlights sped by on the highway outside. He thinks about meeting in the middle, about Earth, midway between Heaven and Hell, about their own side. 

The distance between their fingers is just slightly too great. It's no more than a few inches but feels like a mile.

"Oh, this is ridiculous," he says aloud, staring at the ceiling.

Maybe it's the darkness, or maybe it's the exhaustion, or maybe it's just that he's so tired of not being able to have the things he wants, but for once he doesn't think about consequences and implications. It's been six thousand years of tiny, incremental, tentative movements – one step forward, one step back, sidestep, sidestep, one more careful step forward – but maybe it's time for a leap of faith.

On impulse, he snaps.

The furniture, obligingly, rearranges itself. The nightstands between the two beds shoot forward and resituate themselves along the opposite wall, and the beds themselves move toward one another like they've been magnetized. There is a yelp of surprise as Crowley yanks his hand out of the way just in time, and then the two mattresses are bumping together with a muffled, weighty, satisfying thump.

Crowley seems to have stopped tossing and turning. Aziraphale can hear him breathing, shallow, shaky inhales and exhales that his corporation has no need of, very close by on his left. 

He looks at the featureless ceiling, does not turn his head.

Some truths, spoken and unspoken, are easier shared in the dark. Side by side, rather than face to face. A roadside bench just outside the spill of the streetlight, a night bus to Oxford, here in this darkened bedroom.

Blindly, he reaches out and catches Crowley's hand in his, feels the weight of the cool palm settling in his, the deft fingers, the fingerprints that are more accurately the impressions of fine scales.

"That's better," he says quietly.

Crowley squeezes his hand in response.

Aziraphale closes his eyes and rolls over, slowly, onto his side. He lays his free hand tentatively on Crowley's waist. 

Crowley makes a sleepy noise of assent and shifts a bit closer, with a sidewinding, sinuous motion that only a snake could possibly perform. The pillow beneath Aziraphale's head dips slightly with the weight of a second head. His arm slips down and around Crowley's back, settling in the slight concavity at the base of his spine. He can feel, through the silk, the bumps of Crowley's vertebrae and the slight, regular delineations of scales underneath his fingertips.

They are close enough that the fall of Crowley's hair tickles his own forehead. The scrabbling, fretful worry in his chest subsides, fully and finally.

Against all odds, they fall asleep.

* * *

Crowley, as it turns out, is a cuddler. An aggressive one.

Aziraphale awakens with the sunrise, feeling more well-rested than he has in years. This is curious, because not only does his corporation not require sleep to run at full capacity, it is currently experiencing some discomfort. His right hand has gone numb where it's gotten sandwiched between the two mattresses. The divot where the two beds meet sags beneath his and Crowley's combined weight. There's something hard poking into the small of his back. His mouth tastes of stale wine. One of the pillows is on the floor, and the case has come half off of the other.

Crowley has somehow managed to steal all the blankets for himself, despite also being wrapped inextricably around Aziraphale like the serpent that he is. He is snoring lightly, his breath warm and rather tickly against the back of Aziraphale's neck. His foot seems to have insinuated itself up one leg of Aziraphale's pajama bottoms, and is resting, cold, against his calf.

These are human discomforts. He can miracle them away with a snap or a thought, but he does not do so. He doesn't want to, not in the least.

Instead he wriggles around a bit, so that Crowley's warm chest and stomach are pressed up against the cold parts of his back and bottom, carefully shifts the cold foot away from his calf, and turns his neck just slightly so that Crowley's exhales are soothing instead of tickly. As for getting the blankets away from the demon hoarding them, he gives that up as an impossible task.

His pajama shirt has ridden up during the night, and one of Crowley’s hands is resting against the pale, convex curve of his belly. His knuckles are prominent and knobby, his nails chewed down to the quick. The unconscious press of his thumb is just hard enough to dimple the flesh beneath it. 

Behind him, Crowley stirs and makes a sleepy, snuffling noise, halfway between a snore and a hiss. The hand against Aziraphale's stomach twitches and the fingers flex, holding on, refusing to let go. The foot against his calf is back, creeping up his leg with the gentle drag of scales against hair and skin. A cold nose nuzzles into the spot where his shoulder and neck meet.

And then—is that the gentle press of cool lips at the nape of his neck, the shape of words mouthed silently against his skin?

He does not turn around. Instead, he moves his own hand to cover Crowley's, to press those fingers harder against his stomach, to feel the reality of them, the flesh and bone and blood of them alive and pulsing against his skin.

Some things are six thousand years in the making. Some things are meant to last for far longer than a single night. Some things are worth being brave, being confident, being determined, for. He'll wear Crowley's face when he leaves here today, walk into Hell with all the flash and style Crowley deserves, and give the performance of his long, immortal lifetime.

He'll be damned if he lets Crowley go now.

**Author's Note:**

> As for _why_ Crowley has two beds, I imagine that it's because he's watched too much old TV, where couples always have separate, matching twin beds. (Note that this is not my original idea, it's been floating around tumblr (and probably other places as well) for quite some time.) And Crowley's an optimist, so he's never quite given up hope that Aziraphale might want to have a sleepover with him one day.
> 
> Come visit me [@moondawntreader](https://moondawntreader.tumblr.com/) on tumblr!
> 
> Please see my [AO3 profile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightbloomingcereus/profile) for additional contact info and permissions.


End file.
